Which brings us back to "why do some countries become dictatorships". At the moment, the U.S is unlikley to become a dictatorship.

The thing about the US is what we have seen in the election: It's a deeply divided country. It's pretty hard to make one statement that fits New York in the same way it does the Mid West. A lot of the red states seem to have all it takes to become a fascist state. And the police certainly already acts as if... but the US as a Union overall? No, unlikely. Won't help you if you live in the "wrong" part.

The thing about the US is what we have seen in the election: It's a deeply divided country. It's pretty hard to make one statement that fits New York in the same way it does the Mid West. A lot of the red states seem to have all it takes to become a fascist state. And the police certainly already acts as if... but the US as a Union overall? No, unlikely. Won't help you if you live in the "wrong" part.

I disagree. Robert Mugabe was once a freedom fighter who honestly worked for the good of his people. It's some decades ago, but he was never the spoilt brat that started off with the millions of his dad and all he achieved in life was to increase his inheritance significantly slower than an investment in the stock index would have...

I never saw it, and I was working on an American based political forum at the time. You would have to have little idea of politics and history to make such a comparison. The differences between the two were very, very marked. I remember people at the time claiming that Hitler was left wing, which often happens when people only see politics as a scale from left to right, instead of it being a circle.

I had a great college tutor who demonstrated the political spectrum, and political history with two Newton's Cradles. The more one ball goes to the left, the further the ball on the right is thrown out. Then people become polarised, you begin to remove the centre balls, and eventually, one of the balls gets hit so hard that it does a 360 and hits to opposite extreme instead of the centre. It's difficult to explain in words, but in actions, it made perfect sense.

The second, parallel cradle, was outside influences of the day, poverty, disease, famine, religion, etc... Each of those could be swung to take one of the centre balls out of action, thus creating a bigger swing to the left or right.

You never heard of the moniker, "Bushitler"? Google it, the images are hilarious.

The thing about the US is what we have seen in the election: It's a deeply divided country. It's pretty hard to make one statement that fits New York in the same way it does the Mid West. A lot of the red states seem to have all it takes to become a fascist state. And the police certainly already acts as if... but the US as a Union overall? No, unlikely. Won't help you if you live in the "wrong" part.

Shorter version: "Those guys who dare vote for someone other than my preferred party are all fascists." Lazy thinking.

Thanks. I actually gave a link to the case of a major who thought it's cool to refer to Michelle Obama as "an ape in heels"... I was also referring to the several cases of police violence. You know, those videos where black guys get shot for no apparent reason by officers who later simply have to claim that they felt threatened...

But if a joke is racist/agesit/sexist - it misses the mark.
It's ok to laugh are Merkel for her policies, but not because she is a woman.

Yup. So simply put:

- the Michelle Obama joke was pretty clearly a reference to her skin color. Let's just agree that's racist.
- the GWB joke was based on his rather unclear pronounciation and that the carricaturist believed that he is not the big leader, but the little monkey of the people behind them. Not the most politically correct joke ever, but clearly not racist, right?

- the Michelle Obama joke was pretty clearly a reference to her skin color. Let's just agree that's racist.
- the GWB joke was based on his rather unclear pronounciation and that the carricaturist believed that he is not the big leader, but the little monkey of the people behind them. Not the most politically correct joke ever, but clearly not racist, right?

not racist, but a crude personal attack: replace GWB as monkey with Hillary as the lapdog of Wall street, for example. would you find that fair ?